From US, couple helps Africans with AIDS

It has been a long journey from their childhoods in Ghana to their lives today as successful professionals living in Sharon.

But Dr. Joyce Sackey-Acheampong and Kwaku J. Acheampong have found a way to remain connected to their native country. The married couple are founders of the Foundation for African Relief, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the care of people with HIV/AIDS in Ghana and other parts of Africa.

Sackey-Acheampong, a physician, and Acheampong, an accountant and financial consultant, began the organization three years ago.

Since then, it has established a program through which doctors from Africa come to the United States to receive training in the treatment of patients with the HIV virus and full-blown AIDS.

In partnership with a group in Ghana, FAR opened an HIV/AIDS clinic in Ghana, and has sponsored two workshops there for local doctors.

For Sackey-Acheampong, 43, and Acheampong, 44, their involvement with the Sharon-based FAR has meant periodic visits to the West African nation, including a recent trip from July 17 to Aug. 2. The couple brought their two children, Nicole, 8, and Kwaku, 11. Sackey-Acheampong also spent two weeks in Sudan in February.

Sackey-Acheampong grew up in Accra, the capital of Ghana, and came to the United States in 1981. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Dartmouth Medical School, she is an associate in medicine at Beth Israel Decaoness Medical Center in Boston and an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Acheampong grew up in a village near the city of Kumasi in central Ghana. He came here in 1987 after studying accounting in London. He is chief financial officer and treasurer for Bethel AME Church in Jamaica Plain, and he and his wife are active members.

Dr. Alice Coombs of Sharon, a physician and a longtime friend and fellow church member, describes the couple as "altruistic in every respect."

"They are true givers," she said. "They give without any element of recompense."

For Sackey-Acheampong, the idea for FAR originated in 1998.

As a physician, she had seen firsthand the evolution of treatment for AIDS patients in this country. "I started reading up on what was going on in terms of HIV/AIDS in Africa, and I was just shocked to learn that it almost seemed like time had not moved forward for most Africans, where the disease was pretty much still a death sentence." Huge numbers of people were contracting the virus.

"For me, it was an issue of disparity . . . It really was a burden on my heart," Sackey-Acheampong said.

She and her husband discussed the issue with fellow church members, and "somewhere along the way the seed was sewn that, my goodness, we can do something about this," she said.

In 2000, Sackey-Acheampong, accompanied by her children, went to Ghana to visit family. Prior to the trip, she collected medicines and other supplies that she planned to donate to health facilities there. But on the advice of her pastor, she decided to bring only a small amount of supplies, and instead to seek local contacts through which she might deliver aid in the future.

Sackey-Acheampong spoke to two doctors in Kumasi who had just begun an organization called AIDS Ally, which was devoted to providing compassionate care and support to HIV-positive patients.

Sackey-Acheampong gave the doctors the medicines she had brought, but discovered they did not know how to use them. That gave her the idea to develop a training program for Ghanian doctors.

The program is based at Beth Israel Deaconess and Harvard Medical School, and the two doctors Sackey-Acheampong met in Ghana were the first to participate.

Also following that 2000 trip, Sackey-Acheampong and her husband decided that in light of the donations they had begun to receive for African AIDS relief, it was time to create a nonprofit organization, so she filed the papers that officially established FAR.

The idea for the clinic came from their realization that hospitals in Ghana lacked the facilities and training to care for AIDS patients. Working with AIDS Ally, FAR created a walk-in clinic in Kumasi in November 2001. Run by the two doctors from AIDS Ally, the clinic now has 180 patients. FAR supplies medicine and other supplies.

In late 2001, FAR held the first of its three-day physician training workshops in Ghana, separate from the more intensive training program in Boston.

Sackey-Acheampong said FAR offers people "a road map, just a menu of ideas of what they can do, no matter how small it is" to help ease the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa.

She said her work with the organization "gives me a deeper appreciation for what we have available in this country. I feel very privileged that all I have to do is write a prescription and my patient can walk out there and get a prescription filled. [In Ghana], the doctor has not only to think about what you need, but what is available."

For Acheampong, his involvement with FAR has led to a turn in his career path. After 10 years with Arbella Insurance and Fleet Bank, he left to work for his church. The move has allowed him to devote more time to FAR (he serves as treasurer), and to his children.

"This has made me see what my purpose in life is,' Acheampong said. "There's more I can do to fulfill my life than pursuing my career and making money."